Maybe Obama Is Borat: Charles Krauthammer thinks that Obama plans health
care rationing. I have speculated that Obama may just not be very good with numbers. And now
Frank J. Fleming has come up with a
third theory.

There's a conspiracy theory out there that because Obama hasn't released his real birth certificate, that
proves he isn't a natural citizen and is thus not eligible to be president. I was dismissive of that,
but now I think it's true. If we found his real birth certificate, my guess is that it would say
that he was born in England and that his name is Sacha Baron Cohen.

That's right; we elected Borat president.

I'm like 95 percent certain about this; it just fits, the more I think about it. Don't all the weird
gaffes and the strange adoration of Obama make sense if it were all some Borat-type gag? A lot of
the humor in Borat's character is that Cohen presented him as a well-meaning foreigner who gets people to
dismiss his eccentricities as cultural differences. He'd keep getting weirder and weirder to see
how far he could go before people stopped being polite.

And I have to admit that Fleming's theory explains more than my speculation. If Obama manages to top
that $100 million savings proposal joke — which is not easy to do — we'll have to take a
hard look at Fleming's theory.

What Would You Have To Do To Bring The Federal Budget Back Into Balance If You Enacted
Obama's Programs? Charles Krauthammer thinks he knows; you would have to cut the growth
of future social security payments, and ration health care.

Social Security is relatively easy. A bipartisan commission (like the 1983 Alan Greenspan commission)
recommends some combination of means testing for richer people, increasing the retirement age and a
technical change in the inflation measure (indexing benefits to prices instead of wages). The proposal
is brought to Congress for a no-amendment up-or-down vote. Done.

The hard part is Medicare and Medicaid. In an aging population, how do you keep them from blowing up the
budget? There is only one answer: rationing.

Why do you think the stimulus package pours $1.1 billion into medical "comparative effectiveness
research"? It is the perfect setup for rationing. Once you establish what is "best practice"
for expensive operations, medical tests and aggressive therapies, you've laid the premise for funding some
and denying others.

Rationing health care might not be popular with the public.

(There is another explanation; as I mentioned in
this post, I am beginning — let me repeat, just
beginning — to speculate that Obama is simply not very good with numbers. That explanation
makes Obama more honest, but less competent, than Krauthammer's explanation.

I think Krauthammer switched prices and wages in his parenthetical indexing comment, since we currently
index by prices, not wages.)

Did She, Or Didn't She? Speaker Pelosi has told us that she
didn't know.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing back on GOP charges that she knew about waterboarding for years and
did nothing.

Pelosi says she was briefed by Bush administration officials on the legal justification for using
waterboarding — but that they never followed through on promises to inform her when they actually
began using "enhanced" interrogation techniques

"In that or any other briefing . . . we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of
these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used. What they did tell us is that they had some
legislative counsel . . . opinions that they could be used," she told reporters today.

Nancy Pelosi denies knowing U.S. officials used waterboarding — but GOP operatives are pointing to a
2007 Washington Post story which describes an hour-long 2002 briefing in which Pelosi was told about
enhanced interrogation techniques in graphic detail.

Two unnamed officials told the paper that Pelosi, then a member of the Democratic minority, didn't
raise substantial objections.

Steve Gilbert thinks that Pelosi is not being entirely
truthful, and has
some evidence from a Pelosi interview.

The common sense interpretation of the Pelosi shifts is that she was fine with waterboarding when she
thought it would be popular with her party, and opposed to it when she found that it no longer was.
And, now that she wants to use it against Republicans, she almost has to deny her former position on the
subject.

If old-fashioned politics explains these verbal shifts, then we would have to conclude that Pelosi doesn't
care whether we waterboard terrorists; she just, like many other politicians, wants to be on
the winning side (as she sees it).

For completeness, you have to consider other possible explanations, but I haven't been able to think of one
that flatters the Speaker. (If you can, let me know.) She might, as Congressman Hoekstra
sarcastically suggested, not been paying attention during the briefings. Or, she might have a really
bad memory. But the common sense explanation seems far more likely than either of those
alternatives. We should not be surprised to see a politician "doing what politicians do", even if that
requires the politician to be dishonest about their own record.

The resilience shown by the oil markets is not because of any improvement in the global economy or rise in
oil consumption. Global demand remains on course for its steepest drop since the early 1980s, and
oil inventories are at their highest levels in 19 years.

Instead, analysts said, oil is once again being sought by investors as a refuge against a slumping dollar
and rising inflation. Stabilization of the oil price is also a victory for the OPEC cartel, which
has succeeded in cutting output sharply to match lower demand.
. . .
The action of oil producers has been critical in providing a floor for prices. Members of the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have shown uncharacteristically strong discipline in
recent months in sticking with their pledges to reduce output.

Saudi Arabia and other producers have slashed their overall production by about 3.5 million barrels a day
since September, according to estimates by the Middle East Economic Survey and others, amounting to 75
percent of their commitments to reduce production.

Victories for the OPEC parasites are defeats for the rest of the world. We can hope that the cartel's
grip on the world's economy loosens, but we should not expect that to happen soon, since the Obama
administration is working with them to keep energy prices high.

(One can argue that energy prices should be higher, for environmental reasons, but one should not make that
argument without admitting that those higher prices will mean lost jobs and troubled family budgets.

Incidentally, the article is accompanied by a good graph of oil prices over the last 16 months, though they
do not say exactly which oil prices they are graphing)

Cheney Was Doing A Better Job: David Paul Kuhn thinks this is
shocking.

Double take. Joe Biden is less popular than Dick Cheney. Well, in the first half year of the
first term that is.

A slim 51 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Vice President Biden. Cheney was at 58 percent
in July 2001. Al Gore, 55 percent in April 1993. The veep comparison comes courtesy of the Pew
Research Center's latest report.

But Cheney deserved the higher rating, since he was doing a better job than Biden is doing. The Obama
campaign, having picked Biden for reasons that escape me, soon learned what everyone else has known for years,
that Biden is a lightweight, with a propensity for making embarrassing remarks, some of them true.
So they muzzled him. But Biden slips off the muzzle from time to time, and when does, he often says
something embarrassing. And voters are beginning to notice.

In contrast, Cheney had, if anything, earned respect during the 2000 campaign, and went right to work
as vice president.

(Kuhn must not know much about political polls. He is certain that Biden will never rank as low as
Cheney did on leaving office. But the 11 percent loss that Biden has already suffered suggests that
Biden may well end up with much lower ratings than Cheney.)

The Hampton School Board has been making moves that would be a publicity agent's worst nightmare.

In the past week, it has announced a massive restructuring of Hampton Academy, the school's principal
announced his resignation and, after she thought her job was intact for next year, an educator who is in
the running to be the state's Teacher of the Year was told a mistake had been made and that she would be
laid off.

Reportedly, Christina Hamilton got the news via cell phone while on her way home from school.

"It was an oversight by the decision makers, whether it was the SAU office or the board," said Kevin
Fleming, grievance chairman of the teachers union. "Even though she is recognized as a candidate
for Teacher of the Year, they have to go on seniority."

Because of a union contract, one would guess, though the editorial does not discuss that point
directly.

You must admit that a cellphone message is a classy way to get a layoff notice.

A crewmember from a U.S. ship attacked by Somali pirates said the sole surviving pirate from the group
counted himself lucky to have raided an American vessel and carried himself as the pirates' leader.
. . .
"He told me then when I was with him that it was his dream to come to the USA," said ["Zahid"] Reza,
who immigrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh in 1999.

Don't laugh. Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse is now in New York, on an all-expenses-paid trip.

(With apologies to all those who have practiced hard to get to Carnegie Hall.)

The New York Times War On Science: All right, that's too strong a title,
but I couldn't resist the temptation. Let me restate it, with a little more accuracy: The New
York Times skirmishes against a social science finding they don't like.

But studies have found indications that liberal nominees do better in the process than conservative
ones. The latest, to be presented next month at the Midwest Political Science Association, found
evidence consistent with ideological bias.

"Holding all other factors constant," the study found, "those nominations submitted by a Democratic
president were significantly more likely to receive higher A.B.A. ratings than nominations submitted by
a Republican president."

The differences matter, said Amy Steigerwalt, a political scientist at Georgia State and an author of the
study, along with Richard L. Vining Jr. of the University of Georgia and Susan Navarro Smelcer of Emory.

(I have skimmed through the paper, which you can download
here. It seems quite well
done, certainly better than any of the previous papers they discuss. And the conclusion seems
plausible. Most people would be surprised to find that a group of leftist lawyers treated
conservative nominees as well as leftist nominees.)

As the A.B.A. resumes this role, a new study suggests that it may have a liberal bias. There is
little support for this claim. Indeed, there are signs that the group has been cowed by conservative
critics in recent years into approving less-than-qualified nominees. The A.B.A. needs to ensure
that its evaluators make assessments based on the nominees' merits, not on political pressure.
. . .
A study by a University of Georgia professor and two other political scientists reviewed those ratings
from 1985 to 2008 and found that President Clinton's nominees were 14 percent more likely than the
Republican presidents' choices to receive a "well qualified" rating.

Rather than being a result of bias, this disparity may reflect the degree to which recent Republican
presidents put ideology ahead of excellence in selecting judges. Based on the last eight years, it
is especially hard to argue that the A.B.A. has been a liberal force on judicial selection.

If you aren't familiar with academics, you may not realize just how nasty that second sentence is. By
saying that there is "little support for this claim" the Times is implying that the three political
scientists' study is worthless. That's like saying that a doctor doesn't help his patients, or a
restaurant is selling food that isn't nutritious.

I doubt very much whether anyone on the Times editorial board is qualified to review this paper.
To understand it, you would need to know, among other things, what a "logit" model is. Such knowledge
is not common among journalists.

But the Times was willing to condemn the paper anyway (and come close to slandering the authors) —
because they didn't like the principal finding. One would almost think that they are
anti-science.

(The Times did print a letter in reply
to the editorial. The Times doesn't say whether the letter came in as an attachment to a letter
from a law firm.)

Ford may be standing taller than General Motors in Detroit these days — flush with cash while its rival
is forced to go repeatedly to Washington, hat in hand, seeking government bailouts. But in China
the tables are turned.

G.M. is a powerful presence here with 8 to 10 percent of the market for cars, minivans and sport utility
vehicles, making it the second-largest automaker in China for such vehicles, passed only by Volkswagen.
One of G.M.'s local joint ventures, Wuling, dominates the sale of bare-bones pickups and vans, hugely
popular in rural areas, with nearly half the market.

Unfortunately the Chinese market is not as large as the American market. But this does show what GM
can do — in places where it does not have to negotiate with the UAW, or satisfy the EPA.

What Is The CIA Doing About Terrorism These Days? Not much, according to David Ignatius.

At the Central Intelligence Agency, it's known as "slow rolling." That's what agency officers sometimes
do on politically sensitive assignments. They go through the motions; they pass cables back and
forth; they take other jobs out of the danger zone; they cover their backsides.

Sad to say, it's slow roll time at Langley after the release of interrogation memos that, in the words of
one veteran officer, "hit the agency like a car bomb in the driveway." President Obama promised
CIA officers that they won't be prosecuted for carrying out lawful orders, but the people on the firing
line don't believe him. They think the memos have opened a new season of investigation and
retribution.

The lesson for younger officers is obvious: Keep your head down. Duck the assignments that carry
political risk. Stay away from a counterterrorism program that has become a career hazard.

I can't verify what Ignatius says about the CIA. (And wouldn't tell you, if I could.) But anyone
familiar with bureaucrats will find his conclusions all too plausible.

Sadly, I have to say that I can understand why those officers might not believe Obama. (Some might, for
instance, have heard about his promise to renegotiate NAFTA.)

(Incidentally, after revealing the damage that Obama has done to the CIA, Ignatius says that he still favors
Obama's release of those memos. He didn't persuade me, but you may want to look at his argument,
such as it is, yourself)

Happy Earth Day? In general, I am more than willing to wish people well
when they are celebrating religious holidays, even when I don't share their beliefs or traditions.
That may be irrational theologically, but I think that attitude helps us get along in a country that has
always had a wide variety of religious beliefs.

But I can not wish most of the participants in today's religious celebration well. If they
were satisfied just to plant new trees, or dance around and worship old trees, or something similar, then
I would have no trouble wishing them well. (And, admittedly, enjoying a private chuckle at their
expense.) But they are not content to just hold their own worship services; instead, they want to
force all the rest of us into following their religious beliefs. And some of those beliefs are
destructive.

At this point, I should probably say, wearily, that of course I favor cleaner air and water,
and have for years. (And on the whole have supported politicians who worked to bring those good things
to us.) And I suppose that I should mention that I love hiking, would like to do some backpacking
again, and love to see our natural wonders — not that that will surprise regular readers of this
site.

But I value cleaner air and water, and seeing natural wonders, because those things make human lives better,
not because I think the earth is sacred. And that is where I differ from many of those who will
celebrate Earth Day. I haven't bothered to search, but I will confidently predict that many speakers at
the celebrations today will use religious language to justify their positions. That's a safe prediction,
because some of them always do.

And many of them will ignore the most basic, and obvious, scientific facts. For instance, the world's
population of polar bears has been growing for decades, mostly because we have cut back on hunting the
carnivores. Everyone who has taken an even casual glance at the matter knows that — but you
will still hear, if you attend the religious festivities today, warnings that polar bears are
endangered. Oddly, the speakers will rarely follow that up by saying that we should stop hunting the
bears entirely.

(I say in general, because there are some religions that I would prefer not to see celebrated, for example,
that of the Thuggees, assuming the traditional description
of them is roughly correct.)

The administration has no present plans to reopen negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement to
add labor and environmental protections, as President Obama vowed to do during his campaign, the top
trade official said on Monday.

"The president has said we will look at all of our options, but I think they can be addressed without having
to reopen the agreement," said the official, Ronald Kirk, the United States trade representative. It
was perhaps the clearest indication yet of the administration's thinking on whether to reopen the core
agreement to add labor and environmental rules.
. . .
Not only Mr. Obama but also one of his rivals for the presidency, Hillary Rodham Clinton, had promised during
their campaigns to renegotiate the accord — a politically popular position in some electorally
important Midwestern states that have lost thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Maybe the New York Times will send a reporter out to talk to some of the voters who believed Obama's
promise. Just kidding. Of course the Times won't do that.

(One important question is still open. When Austan Goolsbee reassured the Canadians last year, did
Goolsbee have inside knowledge? Did Obama tell Goolsbee,
or even hint to Goolsbee, that his promise to renegotiate the treaty was just campaign talk?)

Obama And That $100 Million Savings: When politicians make obvious mistakes,
like Joe Biden's stingy charitable contributions, it often tells
us something about how they think.

Obama asking his Cabinet to find $100 million in savings was an obvious flub. When even the Associated
Press and the New York Times find the action of a Democratic president funny, then that president has
almost certainly goofed. Big time.

So why did Obama make that mistake? I can only speculate, and over the last two days I have come up
with a nasty speculation. As of now, I lean against thinking that it is true, and I certainly hope
that it is not true. But it makes just enough sense so that I will share it with you anyway.

Perhaps, to Obama, that $100 million is big money, even in the context of the federal budget. Until
he became president, the largest budget that Obama ever had to administer was the budget for the
Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which spent less than $200 million totally. Obama was not on either of the
two big money committees in the Senate, Appropriations and Finance.

Much about his academic career is obscure, but from what is known publicly, there is no reason to think that
Obama took any courses in mathematics or statistics after, perhaps, his first year at Occidental.

Perhaps — and as I said, I would prefer not to believe this — Obama is so unused to thinking
with large numbers that he did not see that his $100 million would be laughable. (And none of his
aides were willing to tell him.)

Let me repeat that I am just speculating. But I will be looking for more evidence on Obama's
skill, or lack of it, with numbers. (And if you see some evidence, on either side, I would
appreciate hearing about it.)

"Patently False" Mark Thiessen calls President Obama a liar. Or, if you want to be kind, badly misinformed.

In releasing highly classified documents on the CIA interrogation program last week, President Obama
declared that the techniques used to question captured terrorists "did not make us safer." This is
patently false. The proof is in the memos Obama made public -- in sections that have gone virtually
unreported in the media.

Consider the Justice Department memo of May 30, 2005. It notes that "the CIA believes 'the intelligence
acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qaeda has failed to launch a spectacular
attack in the West since 11 September 2001.' . . . In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been
unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including [Khalid Sheik Mohammed] and Abu
Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques." The memo continues: "Before the CIA used enhanced
techniques . . . KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, 'Soon
you will find out.'" Once the techniques were applied, "interrogations have led to specific,
actionable intelligence, as well as a general increase in the amount of intelligence regarding al Qaeda and
its affiliates."

News accounts over the years have generally supported Thiessen's conclusion, not Obama's.

(My own opinion? Obama did not care whether what he said was true or false. He needed to say
that the techniques did not make us safer for political reasons, and so he did.)

- 9:58 AM, 21 April 2009

Even Obama's own intelligence chief says the techniques made us
safer.

President Obama's national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh
interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation
in its struggle with terrorists.

"High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper
understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country," Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the
intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

Time for some enterprising reporter — Jake Tapper perhaps — to ask the Obama administration
about this apparent disagreement between Obama and Blair.

Logically, high value information must have made us safer, or it wouldn't have been of high value.
Unless Blair and Obama have non-standard definitions of the words that they have been using.

Juan Williams Is Not Happy: The Obama administration, working with Democrats
in Congress, has killed the
DC voucher program.

As I watch Washington politics I am not easily given to rage.

Washington politics is a game and selfishness, out-sized egos and corruption are predictable.

But over the last week I find myself in a fury.

The cause of my upset is watching the key civil rights issue of this generation — improving big city
public school education — get tossed overboard by political gamesmanship. If there is one goal
that deserves to be held above day-to-day partisanship and pettiness of ordinary politics it is the effort
to end the scandalous poor level of academic achievement and abysmally high drop-out rates for America's
black and Hispanic students.
. . .
By going along with Secretary Duncan's plan to hollow out the D.C. voucher program this president, who
has spoken so passionately about the importance of education, is playing rank politics with the education
of poor children. It is an outrage.

Read the whole thing.

Williams voted for Obama — and may be beginning to regret that.

You can find reactions to Williams column from teacher Betsy Newmark
here and from
educational reformer Jay P. Greene
here.

(I wrote about the DC vouchers here, and have been
planning to write about the cynical way the Democrats are disbanding Armey's Army, but I have not been able
not been able to bring myself to do so. Now Juan Williams has said what I wanted to say, with far
more passion.)

Ironic And Dismaying: David Carr thinks that the
cable networks generated the
tea parties.

Cable news stations have been criticized for "event-izing" all manner of minor news occurrences —
President Obama's first news conference comes to mind. But the Tax Day Tea Party was all but
conceived, executed and deconstructed in the hothouse of cable news wars.

Carr is being a little coy here, but if you read the whole piece you can figure out what he means. Fox
is creating this movement for ratings, and MSNBC and CNN are responding.

Carr thinks this is a bad thing.

The tea references are not the problem. When a media company sets itself as the party of opposition,
it can have unforeseen consequences. The theatrics make it hard to tell where talk of
secession — the governor of Texas made a veiled threat — states' rights and stringing up
public officials transforms from hyperbole to reality.

The president was likened to Hitler on various posters at rallies, and a sign in Lafayette Park read,
"Stand Idle While Some Kenyan Destroys America? I Don't Think So."

That's David Carr of the New York Times saying that a media company setting itself as the "party of
opposition" can have "unforeseen consequences". (He means bad things will happen.) And it is
simply bizarre to see Carr criticize others for likening Obama to Hitler — without mentioning how many on
the left have made similar comparisons to President Bush, for
years. (For the record, I think both comparisons are absurd.)

As it happens, I agree that we would be better off if our larger media companies did not set themselves up
as parties of opposition — and I have been criticizing Carr's newspaper for years for doing just
that.

Carr's column illustrates how a media company set up as a party of opposition damages itself. To get
estimates of the number attending the "tea parties", Carr uses a partisan source, FiveThirtyEight.com.
If he had checked a partisan source on the other side, he would have found a
much higher number. Judging by the column, Carr did not bother to call any of the people who organized the tea parties to
ask them for their views. That the protesters might have decided to act even without Fox is not an
idea Carr wants to consider.

It is ironic to see the media critic for the New York Times criticizing other news organizations for setting
themselves up as parties of opposition. And it is dismaying to see a reporter ascribe motives to
protesters — without ever bothering to talk to them.

Who Pays How Much? That depends on which federal tax you are considering.

The federal income tax is quite progressive; federal excise taxes are quite regressive. The corporate
income tax is probably quite progressive, though it is not trivial to figure out how to allocate it to
households. (You have to figure out whether imposing it results in lower pay for the workers, higher
prices for consumers, or lower returns for investors, or, most likely, some combination of the three.)
Note, by the way, that the lowest quintile pays about minus seven percent of their income in federal
income taxes. In other words, they get about that much from the government. And the second
lowest quintile also gets a little income tax money. So, very roughly, about forty percent of our
tax filers are enjoying the benefits of a negative income tax.

The social security tax is moderately regressive, but that does not tell the whole story, since the social
security payouts are moderately progressive, perhaps even more than moderately progressive.

You can find more Congressional Budget Office charts
here, along with much
data.

(You are right; this really should have been posted on April 15th, as
Greg Mankiw did.

Oh, and the Pelosi Democrats just raised tobacco taxes, making federal excise taxes even more regressive.)

Was Bush Hitler Or The Antichrist? Professor Jim Lindgren reminds us just
how many people on the left, some of them supposedly serious people, have called Bush a "fascist" or
worse. (Lindgren has, so far, done three posts on on the subject, which you can read
here,
here, and
here.

Lindgren's point is not new; John Leo, whom he quotes extensively, made the same observation in 2003.

The hard left decided long ago that George W. Bush is Hitler. In maddened corners of the Internet and
at swastika-choked antiwar marches, Bush is shown with a Nazi uniform or a Hitler mustache. But
does everyone on the far left believe this? Not at all. Some think that Dick Cheney is the
real Hitler (he commands America's "storm-trooper legions," said former right-wing crackpot and current
left-wing crackpot Lyndon LaRouche). Others think Don Rumsfeld is Hitler (both men favored
mountaintop retreats, the Action Coalition of Taos points out). These comparisons are still being
argued. Air Force veteran Douglas Herman, writing an op-ed piece in Florida, says Rumsfeld is more
like Goering, since both men were fighter pilots, while LaRouche decided that Cheney isn't just
Hitler -- he's Lady Macbeth as well.

Many on the left believe that either Ari Fleischer or Karl Rove is Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Or maybe Richard Perle is related to Goebbels. The September issue of Vanity Fair suggested that
Perle could be Goebbels's twin (side by side photos, headlined "Separated at birth?").

There's more, but you have probably seen much of it before.

As it happens, I can top this, slightly. A Seattle Methodist minister speculated that Bush might be
the Antichrist. A prominent local editor, Knute Berger,
though he has no religious beliefs to speak of, was happy to spread that story. (Earlier, Berger
had urged the left not to run a "noble" campaign.)

As far as I can tell, none of the people who called Bush a fascist, or Hitler, or even the Antichrist,
have been discredited. But all of them should have been.

The Kid With Chocolate Frosting All Over His Face: Occasionally, because I
appreciate low humor, as well as high, I watch
America's Funniest Home Videos.
Some time ago I saw a video of a kid who had been eating a chocolate cake, messily, so that the chocolate
frosting was smeared all over his face. When his parent asked him whether he had eaten the cake,
he denied it with a straight, but chocolate-smeared, face. And he stuck to his story, in spite of
the evidence on his face.

When Obama tells us how he is going to cut the deficit in two (after quadrupling it) or when he tells us he
will be asking his Cabinet to
cut spending, I am reminded of that little kid.

President Obama plans to convene his Cabinet for the first time today, where he will order members to identify
a combined $100 million in budget cuts over the next 90 days, according to a senior administration
official.

Although the cuts would account to a minuscule portion of the federal budget, they are intended to signal
the president's determination to trim spending and reform government, the official said.
. . .
Still, Obama said he is serious about reining in deficits over the long term, and some agencies are
already moving in that direction, the administration said.

And maybe that little kid actually thought that he hadn't been eating the cake.

All this would be even funnier if we were talking about mere billions in waste, rather than trillions.

- 8:25 AM, 20 April 2009

More: Even the Associated Press finds that $100 million laughable, as you
can read here,
and see here. Actually, now that I think of it, Jennifer Loven seems more annoyed than amused in that
video.

It Didn't Start In 2000: This New York Times editorial recycles many
leftist myths about
the 2000 election.

Since 2000, Florida has been synonymous with badly run and undemocratic elections. This distinction
has not come to it by chance. Many of the state's election officials and legislators work hard to
keep eligible voters from casting ballots.

Another provision would require election officials to purge voting rolls more frequently, a sore point
in Florida, where an improper purge of the rolls before the 2000 election removed many eligible voters.

In fact, Florida has a long history of election fraud, which explains why legislators and governors of
both parties have tried to tighten the election laws. John Fund's Stealing Elections has a few samples from many.

Here, for example, is the story behind that "improper purge":

A mandate for the list was passed into law in 1998, sponsored by two Democratic legislators and signed by a
Democratic governor, Lawton Chiles, Jeb Bush's predecessor. The law came about in is response to the
Miami mayoral election in 1997 that was overturned by a court due to widespread voter fraud, with votes from
disqualified felons and dead people. (pp. 100-101)

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris is often accused of removing voters from the polls, but she had
no legal authority to do so. All she did was send a lists of possible illegal voters to the
county officials for them to check. Some counties, most of them controlled by Democrats, simply
ignored the list — in spite of the legal requirement that they check for illegal voters.

And there is more, much more:

Both the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post found that, if anything, county officials were
too permissive in who they allowed to vote, and this largely benefitted Al Gore. An analysis in the
Post found that 5,600 people whose names matched the names of convicted felons who should have been
disqualified were permitted to cast ballots. "These illegal voters almost certainly influenced the
down-to-the-wire presidential election," the Post reported. "It's likely they benefitted
Democratic candidate Al Gore. Of the likely felons identified by the Post, 68 percent were registered
Democrats." (p. 101)

Both newspapers endorsed Al Gore.

The New York Times is right about one thing; many of the state's elected officials worked "hard to keep
eligible voters from casting ballots".

In fact, during all the various lawsuits against Florida, only two people testified that they were not
allowed to vote because their names were mistakenly on the ["purge"] list. But in contrast to this
trivial number, Bill Sammon, now with the Washington Examiner, points out that some 1,420 military
ballots, some clearly received on or before Election Day, were disqualified at the behest of Democratic
lawyers because they didn't technically comply with Florida's law requiring a foreign postmark. (p. 101)

(There is a federal law that might have overruled the Florida law, but the Republicans did not react quickly
enough to use it to protect these military votes.) In some counties, Democratic officials
disqualified every single overseas vote.

To the best of my knowledge, the New York Times has never published a story on those 5,600 almost certainly
illegal felon votes. And the Times appears to have forgotten about the disqualified military votes,
though it was such a scandal at the time that even vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman objected to the
disqualifications. (And earned the undying hatred of a few on the left for wanting to have an honest
election.)

(The Miami 1987 mayoral election drew the most attention, but there were other serious cases of vote fraud
in Florida in the ten years before the 2000 election. There were scandals in both Broward and Palm
Beach counties, just to the north of Miami. All three counties are controlled by Democrats.)

Why Are These Men Smiling? In January, President Obama criticized Hugo
Chavez, and Chavez replied with an insult. So when they get together both men are
all smiles;
Obama even has what is crudely known as a sh*t-eating grin on his face.

Similarly, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega makes a long speech blaming the United States for everything from the
common cold to bad breath, and Obama greets him with that same
grin.

That's not a rhetorical question. As with Obama's bow to the Saudi king, I suspect that Obama's grins
to these two men tells us something, but I have no idea what they tell us.

It is easy to speculate. But we have so little data that all we can do is speculate.
For all I know, Obama may be thinking something like this in those two encounters: "Sucker, when I am done
with you, I am going to cut your heart out and eat it." That seems unlikely, but it is hard to know
what this strange man, Obama, is thinking. (The thoughts of the other two seem obvious enough; both
hope, for whatever reasons, that they can use Obama.)

We might get some idea of what Obama means by those grins if we could find more examples. I don't
recall Obama giving those grins to his Democratic primary rivals, or to John McCain. Or to Prime
Minister Brown, or to President Sarkozy. If you have seen that Obama grin before, let me know, so I can
share the clue.

(An obvious point, but one you may not see in every news story on these encounters: There are few
things that would help Venezuela more than to have Chavez replaced by a moderate, competent president.
And no serious person would choose Ortega as the best man to lead Nicaragua.)

Worth Studying: Professor MacKay's book on
sustainable energy — without the hot air. Professor
MacKay explains why he wrote the book in the
preface:

I'm concerned about cutting UK emissions of twaddle — twaddle about sustainable energy. Everyone
says getting off fossil fuels is important, and we're all encouraged to "make a difference," but many of
the things that allegedly make a difference don't add up.

Twaddle emissions are high at the moment because people get emotional (for example about wind farms or
nuclear power) and no-one talks about numbers. Or if they do mention numbers, they select them to
sound big, to make an impression, and to score points in arguments, rather than to aid thoughtful
discussion.

This is a straight-talking book about the numbers. The aim is to guide the reader around the claptrap
to actions that really make a difference and to policies that add up.

Though written for Britain, the analyses in the book will be helpful almost everywhere in the developed
world.

I didn't write this book to make money. I wrote it because sustainable energy is important. If
you would like to have the book for free for your own use, please help yourself: it's on the internet
at www.withouthotair.com.

This is a free book in a second sense: you are free to use all the material in this book, except for the
cartoons and the photos with a named photographer, under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. (The cartoons and photos
are excepted because the authors have generally given me permission only to include their work, not to
share it under a Creative Commons license.) You are especially welcome to use my materials for
educational purposes. My website includes separate high-quality files for each of the figures
in the book.

Suppose that you don't feel up to reading the whole thing. Then you can read portions of it on line,
or just download this ten page synopsis.
(Everyone interested in energy problems should do at least that much.)

This is probably obvious, but I'll say it anyway: If you know someone who thinks it will be easy
to switch to sustainable energy sources, you may want to share this book with them.

Stingy, And Not Very Bright: Vice President Biden is not a
generous man.
With his own money, anyway. With the taxpayer's money, well . . .

But what surprises me even more about Biden's unwillingness to contribute significantly to charities is that
it isn't very smart — for a politician.

One of the simplest and most effective ways for a politician to build support is by contributing to
charities. That's not a new idea; in fact, it dates back to at least 500 BC, and probably
to long before then.

But now Biden, like John Kerry and Al Gore before him, has turned out to be the very opposite of a cheerful
giver. He didn't even learn from Bill Clinton's example. The Clintons, whatever else one may
say about them, were smart enough (perhaps even generous enough) to contribute significantly to charities
before he ran for the presidency.

(More
here,
and some quite funny attempts to defend Biden in the comments
here.)